The rest of the story…

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 – Just another boring day at home. I was very bad and met Jake out for lunch. We ate at the Penn Station on Pendleton Pike because he was working a job in the area. I had a ham and cheese sandwich. Afterward, I went back to man my station on the couch. Jake came home from work and we had dinner (I don’t remember what we had, but I know it wasn’t spicy). Back to being a big lazy bum. Jake has a tendency to fall asleep on the floor when he is watching tv and this night was no different. I was laying on the couch, completely restless, and finally woke him up and told him to go to bed at around 11 p.m. I went back out to the couch, very annoyed that I couldn’t sleep.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 – 1 a.m. started having some contractions. Because I had stopped taking the Procardia earlier in the week, I knew that my contractions would come back, but I expected regular old Braxton Hicks contractions. From my very first one, I knew these were different. I started timing them on a Web site and they varied between two and four minutes apart. Honestly, I was not in any pain at all; I mean, I was used to these things, I’d been having them for 10 weeks, they just came with the territory.

3 a.m. – After two hours of timing, I decided I might as well call the OB office and let them know what was going on. They asked me to come in just to get checked out. So, instead of doing what I was told, I took a nice shower, puddered around a bit and finally woke up Jake. He was NOT happy that I was waking him up two hours earlier than he normally got up for work. He kept saying that he didn’t understand why we had to go in, they were just going to send us home. I asked him to take off his grumpy face, load up the bags and get in the car or I was going to walk to the hospital by myself (the hospital is about 300 yards from our back yard so this was an ongoing joke).

4 a.m. – Arrived at the hospital and got settled into triage. This is where they determine whether you’re in real labor and you get to be admitted to a room or you’re a first-time mom who thinks her water has broken but she has actually pee’d herself. I was 4 cms. Jake was pretty surprised to hear the nurse say “You’re not going home again until you’ve had your babies.” At this point, I am in minimal pain.

6 a.m. – 6 cms. I move into my own room and get assigned an awesome nurse who was the exact type of personality I needed. Still not too much pain. I was breathing through the contractions, trying to concentrate and just take it all in. The nurse sent in an anesthesiologist who gave me an epidural. At this point, I will say that I truly believe I could have done without drugs, however, this was my first time doing something like this and I thought it would take forever. Also, my hospital highly recommends epidurals with twin births because there is a chance that an emergency c-section would be necessary. As soon as the epidural was inserted, Dr. B. came in and broke my water. She found that Baby A had meconium in her fluid. Dr. B. told me that she wanted to go ahead and break my water because she was afraid I would stall and labor would last a long time if she didn’t. She had a surgery at 9 a.m., but she said as soon as she was done, she would come check on me.

6:30 a.m. – 9 a.m. – I slept. Jake slept. Yes, you read that right, we slept through the rest of my labor.

9 a.m. – Nurse comes in to check on me and in the process wakes me up a bit. Before she even has a chance to check me, I tell her that I believe we are go for launch. She checks me and is amazed that I am 10 cms and ready to go. Dr. B. is still in surgery so I request Dr. S. from the same practice. Dr. S. comes to my room and says that she is ready when I am. I did one or two practice pushes…honestly, I can’t remember…I just remember the nurse saying something about no more practice pushes, these babies are ready! So I was wheeled to the OR to deliver.

9-something – I was in the OR, Jake was standing on my right side, awesome nurse was on my left side, Dr. S. and some student doctor were at my feet. A different anesthesiologist was there, ready in case of an emergency, four infant nurses and 2 NICU doctors. So, 12 people in one room were ready to welcome our sweet girlies into the world. Dr. S. said that it was ok for me to go ahead and start pushing with the next contraction.

9:45 a.m. – Sydney Anne was born after three contractions. Because of the meconium, she had to be suctioned immediately and taken to a warmer. I was able to see her from where I was on the bed. I took about a two second breather.

9:53 a.m. – Carynne Marie was born after two contractions. She was definitely ready to meet the world and I’m sure she would have come out even more quickly if I hadn’t taken a breather. She was taken over to a warmer and I sent Jake over to get every little last detail on camera because I was afraid I would be out of it and not remember later.

By 10 a.m., both girls had been examined by the NICU doctors and were determined to be healthy and perfect so I put one girl in each arm and got wheeled back to my room. There we were, a family of four.

Last night Jake and I were laying in bed. He rolled over and said to me “God, I miss those little girls so much.” I miss our little family of four.